her face, and
when Anson came out to help her alight, and noticing it asked, "What's
the matter?" she burst out afresh, crying, and talking incoherently.
Anson was astonished.

"Why, what's the matter, Flaxie? Can't you tell ol' pap? Are ye sick?"

She shook her head, and rushed past him into the house and into her
bedroom, like a little cyclone of wrath. Ans slowly followed her, much
perplexed. She was lying face downward on the bed, sobbing.

"What's the matter, little one? Can't y' tell ol' pap? Have the girls
be'n makin' fun o' yeh again?"

She shook her head.

"Have the boys be'n botherin' yeh?" No reply. "Who was it?" Still
silence. He was getting stern now. "Tell me right now."

"Jack Reeves--an'--an' another feller."

"Wha' d' they do?" Silence. "Tell me."

"They--pinched me, an'--an'--talked mean to me," she replied, breaking
down again with the memory of the insult.

Anson began to understand.

"Wal, there! You dry y'r eyes, Flaxie, an' go an' git supper; they
won't do it again--not _this_ harvest," he added grimly as he marched
to the door to enter the buggy.

Bert, coming along from the barn and seeing Anson about to drive away,
asked where he was going. Anson tried to look indifferent.

"Oh, I've got a little business to transact with Reeves and some other
smart Aleck downtown."

"What's up? What have they be'n doing?" asked Gearheart, reading
trouble in the eyes of his friend.

"Well, they have be'n a little too fresh with Flaxen to-day, an' need a
lesson."

"They're equal to it. Say, Anson, let me go," laying his hand on the
dasher, ready to leap in.

"No: you're too brash. You wouldn't know when to quit. No: you stay
right here. Don't say anything to Flaxen about it; if she wants to know
where I'm gone, tell her I found I was out o' nails."

As Anson drove along swiftly he was in a savage mood and thinking
deeply. Two or three times of late some of his friends had touched
rather freely upon the fact that Flaxen was becoming a woman. "Girls
ripen early out in this climate," one old chap had said, "and your
little Norsk there is likely to leave you one of these days." He felt
now that something deliberately and inexpressibly offensive had been
said and done to his little girl. He didn't want to know just what it
was, but just who did it; that was all. It was time to make a protest.

Hitching his horse to a ring in the sidewalk upon arrival, he walked
into the drug store, which was